


A Cold and Lucky Day in Hell

by TW Lewis (gardendoor)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-12
Updated: 2008-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardendoor/pseuds/TW%20Lewis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney, John, Siberia, and the prank war to end all prank wars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cold and Lucky Day in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: They’re not mine. Leesa Perrie asked for Rodney-centric gen involving Siberia, hobbies, or training/trainers, and was hoping for funny, AU or childhood. Me being me, I threw all that and the kitchen sink in there. Slightly spoilerish author's note at the end.

Rodney's first thought, when the plane landed on the frozen strip of tarmac by the barren metal-and-concrete cubes of the Siberian research station, was that Samantha Carter was being unreasonably vindictive. She could have just slapped him if she needed to get it out of her system, although on second thought, _ow_ , she would probably have broken his face.

The Air Force officer who'd been assigned as his security pulled on a pair of fingerless gloves and preceded him out onto the landing strip. "So, alien technology, your own research lab, you must be excited, McKay," he yelled over the bitter gusts of wind.

"It's Doctor McKay, Major, and no, I was excited when I got to work with _actual_ alien technology in a _real_ lab at Area 51. I'd be surprised if the lab equipment here is more sophisticated than a Tinker Toys set."

"Hey, at least you get to do what you love. They're never going to let me get within ten feet of a cockpit here."

Rodney stopped short and blinked, then hurried to catch up before he froze to death. "You're a pilot? Wow, you must have really screwed up for them to dump you here; I thought the Air Force actually needed pilots."

"Almost as much as they need genius scientists," said Major Sheppard, showing his teeth. "So how badly did you screw up?"

At the entrance, the Russian airmen checked their IDs and opened the door for them. Rodney was already fumbling with the clasp of his jacket, eager to experience the joys of central heating again, but the inside of the facility was just as bitter cold as the outside had been.

Colonel Chekov looked them over and smirked. "Doctor McKay. Major Sheppard. I hope your journey here was pleasant."

"Yes, yes, you're honored to meet me; seriously, did you people forget to pay the heating bill or something?"

"I am sorry," said Colonel Chekov. "Heating this facility would melt the permafrost beneath us and bury us so deeply in the mud that we would never be found again."

No heat. No heat in _Siberia_. "Oh, that's just great," Rodney growled.

"If you will follow me, please, I will show you which areas of the facility you may wander freely."

"As opposed to where we'll be shot on sight?" asked the Major.

Colonel Chekov's smile took on a feral glint. "I do not think that will be necessary, do you?"

The tour that followed covered their living quarters (freezing concrete bunkers with lumpy mattresses that were going to _kill_ his back), the labs (dented steel tables, equipment that predated Stalin, and did he mention it was freezing?), and the mess, where they were served the first of what was likely to be a long line of meals featuring potatoes, SPAM on dark rye bread, and plenty of vodka. Thankfully, citrus seemed to be too great a luxury to ship across the Siberian tundra. And at least their dinner companions seemed to be a bright spot in the day, until Rodney discovered that, despite his entirely reasonable assumption, the two extremely hot chicks named Sveta and Luba were not call girls hired to entertain the Americans, but were in fact _Doctors_ Svetlana Markov and Luba Kozak. Also, that Russian women could belt a man hard enough to knock him across a table.

Which began an interminable series of days spent implementing and explaining the discoveries of other people who were actually out _doing_ research at Area 51 and the SGC, and watching Major Sheppard flirt with Drs. Markov and Kozak and play drinking games with the Russians and generally make himself everyone's best friend. Rodney was no one's best friend. No one would even talk to him. The situation seriously sucked.

At a certain point, miserable and bored, Rodney decided it was time to pull out the old Feynman maneuver: break into every locked room on the base, one each night, and leave taunting messages for the guards to find in the morning, starting with the kitchen storerooms. The lock was a pig, an old iron antique with tumblers so heavy that Rodney broke a stylus jimmying it open. He was so out of practice that it took half an hour on his knees in the dark hallway, sweating in his zipped parka as he maneuvered the styluses with numb fingers. But finally the last tumbler popped into place like a dislocated joint snapping back into alignment and the door groaned open to reveal the mother lode. Rodney scrawled the nastiest note he could manage with his pidgin Russian, telling those idiots how incompetent their security was, and took a loaf of pumpernickel and three tins of sardines as a reward.

That night, he slept like a baby for the first time since coming here, and grinned around his powdered eggs at breakfast as the security chief lit into a scrawny private.

Next on his agenda was the massive chamber that had once held the Stargate. Nothing to guard there, now, so security was low, and with less than five minutes' work he buggered the keypad and waltzed right in to leave a note reading, "Good thing the Americans took it first."

The bellows of outrage the next morning kept him smiling over his work all day.

Next up was the armory, heavily guarded, so rather than trying to deal with the door situation, Rodney spent the day going over the base's ventilation schematics, quickly clicking open his email every time Major Sheppard wandered over to see what he was doing.

The fifth time Sheppard peeked over his shoulder, trying to see how close Rodney was to making the F-302 Arctic-weather-viable, he was just in time to see an email pop up with the subject line, "It's a girl, you jerk."

"You got some girl pregnant?" Sheppard blurted out.

"What? No! That's my sister!"

Sheppard wrinkled his nose. "You got your sister pregnant?"

"My sister who _married_ the idiot who got her pregnant. What kind of Jerry Springer universe do you live in?"

"So, you're an uncle? Cool."

"Not really," said Rodney, and clicked delete.

"You're not even going to read it?"

"She's ruining her life; it's like stopping to look at a traffic acci-- hey!" Rodney yelped as Sheppard leaned over him and dragged the email out of the trash file to click it open. Jeannie looked pale and exhausted, with a weird, triumphant smile on her face like she'd pulled an all-nighter and solved one of the Millennium Problems. What's-his-name was leaning over her shoulder, looking happy and slightly panicked. And there in Jeannie's arms was the squashed turnip Jeannie had thrown away her life for.

"Wow. Poor kid's got your face and your hair. Hopefully she'll grow out of it," said Sheppard. "You should send them something. Baby clothes, or, I don't know."

"Yeah, because Siberia is world-renowned for its export of quality children's clothes and toys."

"We have internet, McKay; you could order something online."

"What, and pretend I condone this? Jeannie could have done serious work. She could have changed the field of mathematics. Now her brain's going to turn to mush babbling nursery rhymes and cleaning up after something that's not even housebroken. If she needed something cute to waste her affections on, she could have gotten a cat. Cats are housebroken. And smart."

"I hear after a couple of years you actually can potty train kids and teach them stuff," said Sheppard.

"I meant her husband," said Rodney snidely.

"I'm just saying, kids grow up. In a few years, she'll be in school all day and your sister can pick up where she left off, if she wants to."

"You don't understand; a few years in the outside world is like a _lifetime_ in science, all right? Even if she wanted to come back, she'd be completely out of her league, competing with twenty-year-olds in their prime. There's no reset button in science. When you're out, you're out."

"So that means when you finally get to leave here, your career's over?"

Rodney jerked his chin up. "It's different for me. I'm a genius."

"Oh, I see. You know, _Doctor_ McKay, I was wrong. Your sister's much better off without you." Sheppard stalked off to take up position outside the door.

***

That night, it took three hours to squeeze through the freezing, clanging vents, even stripped down to his boxers and undershirt. When he finally made it to the armory and switched on the lights, there was a note in English resting on top of a crate of obsolete Russian rifles: "Beat you to it, genius. Better luck next time!"

Rodney swore and cursed all the way back through the vents to his room, where he found that the same prankster had broken into his quarters and rigged his bed, desk and papers to the ceiling.

***

That was _so_ 'game on.' Rodney took a detour on his lunch hour to break into Sveta and Luba's rooms, leaving them each a passionate love letter addressed to the other with Sheppard's signature scrawled at the bottom. The next day, he came into the lab to find his workstation covered in magazine cut-outs of teeny-bopper boy bands and construction paper hearts. Two days later, Rodney broke into every locker in the locker room and left red tee shirts and copies of a manifesto in Cyrillic detailing why the Russian armed forces were the slowest, dumbest, most bumbling cannon fodder in the galaxy, second only to the Furlings, and should bow down before the might of the U.S. Air Force, figuring that either the Russians would think that John sent it, and beat him up for Rodney, or they'd figure out that Rodney sent it, finally decide he was more trouble than he was worth, and ship him back to the States.

Instead, Colonel Chekov flew in from Moscow just to bellow at Rodney for two hours, then left him to the tender mercies of Major Davis, who was really, really disappointed with Rodney for this complete travesty of international diplomacy. Then they confiscated Rodney's emergency chocolate supply and ordered him confined to quarters unless escorted by the Russian airmen he'd just royally pissed off.

Rodney chose to stay in his room.

Of course, the guards were meant to keep him in, not keep other people out, so after three days, Sheppard strolled in with his jacket bundled under his arm like the cold didn't bother him at all. "Emailed your sister yet?"

"How is that your business?" Rodney asked. "Oh yes, Major, please make yourself at home," he added, as Sheppard flopped down on his bed without asking.

"Thanks," came the unrepentant reply. "So, did you?"

"They took away my laptop," Rodney grumbled. "Trying to break my will with their psychological warfare."

Sheppard quirked a smile at him and unwrapped his bulky, folded jacket to reveal Rodney's laptop.

"Oh, you're kidding me!" Rodney snatched it out of Sheppard's hands and hugged it to his chest before he realized that Sheppard was watching him, amused. He blushed bright red and made a big show of turning away to plug it in. "I mean, um, thanks. How'd you get it?"

"You're not the only one who can pick locks, and by the way, seriously, who do you think you are? Richard Feynman?"

"I met him once," said Rodney, still reflexively cuddling the laptop. "Sixth grade science fair. I built a non-working model of a nuclear bomb, and spent six hours being interrogated by the CIA."

"You built a nuclear bomb? When you were twelve?" Sheppard's voice climbed.

"I was ten, and didn't I just say it was a non-working model? Why does everyone always freak out about that?"

"You were interrogated by the CIA for six hours when you were ten," Sheppard repeated.

"Yeah, they just kept at me, on and on, wanting to know if I was working for some terrorist organization. They gave me a serious case of claustrophobia in that tiny cell, and when I completely freaked out on them, they called Dr. Feynman in. He sat down next to me and showed me three ways to break out of the room to calm me down. Then he made me walk him through how I'd built the damned thing, told me I had potential and not to take any shit, and walked out. Five minutes later, they let me go and I had a summer internship lined up at CalTech."

Sheppard blinked. "Wow."

"Yeah."

"A section head from the Manhattan Project checked your homework."

"Definitely one of my top three happy memories."

"That only makes the top three? What are the other two?"

"Making my department head cry like a girl during my doctoral defense, and making sweet, sweet love to Dr. Samantha Carter." He coughed. "That last one hasn't quite happened yet, but I'm keeping the slot open."

"Wow," said Sheppard. "And I thought your ego was huge before."

Rodney jerked his chin up defensively. "I have a healthy and totally justified sense of self esteem, thank you."

"Whatever you say," said Sheppard, and got up to leave. "Good night, Rodney."

***

Since the change in the weather meant it was now two degrees above zero centigrade instead of twenty below, and since the armed goons babysitting him were good at fetching and carrying (as long as he pretended not to understand them when they insulted him in Russian), Rodney decided it was time to start the practical application of his work, and spent the warmest hours of the day sealed in the cockpit of the prototype Arctic F-302, trying to marry Russian and Western operating code with Goa'uld-derived hardware. The cockpit was pretty warm anyway, and it was worth the days of brisk walks in the cold to finally be able to lean over Sheppard in the mess hall and smugly announce, "It's ready."

"What's re--the F-302? It's ready?" Wow, the guy lit up like a kid on Christmas. Rodney could get used to being worshipped.

"Mm," said Rodney. "Not my fastest work, but I had to make sure I worked out all the remaining bugs those idiots at Area 51 missed. Of course, I'm going to need a test pilot to make sure the hardware's handing the cold the way it should..."

Sheppard dragged McKay down the hall to the elevator so fast, Rodney was sure they'd broken land speed records.

***

He stayed to watch Sheppard loop barrel rolls across the sky; he had to make sure the plane worked, after all, and it wasn't that cold. Almost three degrees centigrade. When the plane swooped down to skim the bright green peat bogs for the fifteenth time, Rodney sighed and pulled out his laptop. Might as well get some work done, if Sheppard was going to take all day about this. Just one thing, first: Rodney clicked his way through the order form he'd bookmarked, entered his credit card info, and sent a crate of educational Montessori toys to be delivered to Jeannie's house. He didn't want the kid rotting its brains on Teletubbies, after all.

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Richard Feynman, one of the physicists on the Manhattan Project, was so bored and frustrated with being confined to base for the duration of the project that he began picking locks and leaving taunting notes for people to find in the morning, accidentally starting a panic that there was a Soviet spy on base. He was famous for lateral thinking and for MacGuyvering solutions from inexpensive, mundane parts instead of insisting on fancy machines, qualities I'm betting Rodney McKay would delight in.


End file.
